They gave their entire lives to this An American woman's grief over her parents' deaths on the Hajj.
The daughter of the couple who passed away while making the pilgrimage to Mecca remarked, "They sacrificed everything to go on this journey."
Saida Wurie stated that her parents' lifelong ambition was to take part in the annual Hajj, a holy journey that takes Muslims from all over the world to Saudi Arabia. They had paid $23,000 to an all-inclusive vacation package issued by a Maryland-registered tour operator. She said to Fredricka Whitfield, "They saved their whole lives for this."
The vacation of a lifetime, however, took a terrible turn last week when Wurie found out that her father, Alieu Dausy Wurie, 71, and mother, Isatu Tejan Wurie, 65, were two among the hundreds of pilgrims who perished in the Persian Gulf nation's harsh heat. Although the official death toll is above 500, there are concerns that the actual death toll is much higher. From Bowie, Maryland, the Wuries were citizens of the United States. According to her daughter, the Mrs. Wurie had recently retired from her position as head nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Prince George's County.
Wurie said she had kept in frequent contact with her parents via a family group chat while they were in Saudi Arabia in an interview with CNN's Whitfield on Saturday. She claimed to have discovered during that conversation that the tour operator had not given her the necessary credentials or appropriate transportation to take part in the trip. She claimed that the group her parents were travelling with, which might have included as many as 100 other pilgrims, did not have enough food or supplies for the five- to six-day pilgrimage that is a fundamental aspect of Islam. Wurie feels the tour operator "did not receive what they paid for" and that her parents were not "properly prepared" for the trip. The tour operator has been contacted by CNN for a statement.
Her mother messaged her on Saturday, June 15, informing her that they had already been waiting for transportation to take them to Mount Arafat for hours. That was the last time she had heard from her parents. She thinks that at the time, they were in Mina. After walking for more than two hours, the couple decided to walk instead and send a message to their daughter.
The pair then gathered on Mount Arafat with other pilgrims and members of their tour group to pray and contemplate the sacred place. After Saida Wurie's father declared he was unable to continue the journey and that he had to stop for a break, a man in their tour group contacted her to inform her that her parents had vanished on Mount Arafat. After climbing Mount Arafat, the man descended, but he was unable to locate the couple.
On June 15, Wurie learned of her parents' deaths by "natural causes" from the US Consulate in Jeddah, which had received the notifications from the Saudi Interior Ministry. A person at the US Embassy later informed her that heat stroke would be regarded as a natural cause. Her parents had already been buried, the Consulate General's Office informed her, but they were unable to provide the precise location. Saida and her brothers are now making every effort to locate their parents' final resting place and obtain answers.
"We requested that the bodies be held by the Saudi government so that we could go to Saudi Arabia and at the very least bury them properly with their children present and be able to identify the bodies," she said to Whitfield. "They have sadly already been buried."
Since she does not speak Arabic and is unfamiliar with the location, she would prefer that American officials meet her and her brothers on the ground when they arrive to help them locate their parents' grave and get their belongings. She stated that as of Saturday, ambassadors had not committed to personally seeing them in Saudi Arabia. Although it acknowledged that there had been "deaths of multiple US citizens in Saudi Arabia," the US State Department would not comment on the Wurie family's specific circumstances.
One of the main causes of the hundreds of Hajj deaths and injuries this year has been identified as extreme heat. Monday's temperatures in Mecca, the holy city that serves as the hub for Hajj travellers, soared to a record-breaking 125 degrees Fahrenheit. This year's event was predicted to be extremely hot, so the Saudi army sent more than 1,600 people, including 30 fast response teams and medical units, especially for heatstroke victims. There were an additional 5,000 volunteers providing first aid and health care.
June 16, 2024: During the annual Hajj trip in Mina, a woman uses a hand-held battery-operated fan to cool a guy who is lying on the ground during the symbolic'stoning of the demon' ceremony.
However, several Hajj travellers CNN contacted with that the preparations were insufficient; one pilgrim described witnessing other worshippers pass out and passing bodies wrapped in white linen. The precise number of fatalities is still unknown and is probably going to increase because nations all around the world have been independently reporting the deaths of their citizens. An additional growing concern is inappropriate tour groups. Egypt said on Saturday that it was cancelling the permits of sixteen tour companies that arrange Hajj pilgrimages, according to state-run news source Ahram Online.
Hundreds of pilgrims have perished before while performing the Hajj, which drew more than 1.8 million participants this year. In the Saudi Arabian city of Mina, which is located outside of Mecca, a stampede in 2015 claimed the lives of over 700 people. A rush at the location where pilgrims congregated to take part in the "stoning of the devil" ceremony in Mina in 2006 claimed the lives of 363 people. Over 200 people lost their lives in 2018.
